Simply not good.
My film-dar has vanished this year, normally I am pretty good at calling whether or not a film is going to suck or rock, sometimes of course I am pleasantly surprised but most of the time I get it on the nose. This year my judgements have been totally off, completely vanished even, were I thought Alice in Wonderland would be another Tim Burton flop it was a winner and where I thought Kick-Ass would be a wonderful cult romp it fell on its well.. Ass.
From the moment that we were introduced to the characters I was excited, after having seen the trailer for Clash of the Titans (my eccentric taste in gigantic movie monsters ran rampant) I was in a good mood, ready for entertainment. I have tried hard to work out what exactly it was that made it so dull for me, there sitting at the directors feet was a wonderful list of characters, a fairly composite story and a couple of seasoned actors to help carry the young ones along. I had expected so much more from Vaughn, the producer of Lock Stock, Mean Machine and Snatch and the director of Stardust, seemed to have such a wonderful sense of the ridiculous. Obviously he has been sitting at Guy Ritchies feet far too long and had picked up his inability to get a film moving without guns and blood. I could happily sit here and go on about the inanely boring narrative, the slow moving direction and the inability to draw out of his actors a glimmer of excitement for their characters but I will simply tell you this, go see it if you are ready for the comic to be better.
I have read reviews recently proclaiming its “originality” its “shock factor” it’s “up yours to the superhero genre” It is nothing new, we saw a young girl with a gun in Leon, we have seen the average man being a hero in The Greatest American Hero (granted he had a special power suit) and as an up yours to the Superhero genre I can kind of see but mostly it just seemed like a wank fest for all the comic fan boys who have ever thought they could be Batman.
Right enough of the bashing I will take a moment to talk about what I did love about the film, I loved Hit Girl, she did her best with what she had they could have given her so much more, it often felt like they held right back on her, for fear of truly pushing the boundaries of having a young girl swearing and killing. Kick-Ass was wonderfully cast; perfect blend of kind of cute geek boy and complete pussy was used to create a character I would imagine teenage boys could relate to. The action sequences were reminiscent and I think homage to John Woo with slow moving air running, guns blazing, I did laugh when Big Daddy was questioning Hit Girl and asked her what the first movie John Woo directed was.
The film lacked for me, I wanted more, I wanted better narrative and better direction, this is more Swept Away and less Stardust, try harder Mr Vaughn.
